This is the tentative first album by Schwarz Of Galiorka, the band (or should I say duo) me and Paolo M. created after The Gags’ demise in 1982. The album was recorded in 1983 in a small 8-track studio in the outskirts of Milan. It wasn’t released at the time: the songs were issued more than a decade later by Passerotto on a CD-only compilation (‘Tapes Of Mistery And Imagination’, 1997), with the addition of some extra tracks. So in a way this is an absolute first, as the album you hold in your hands looks and sounds the way it was originally intended.
Schwarz Of Galiorka always spent their days running back and forth from rehearsal room to recording studio and vice versa (uhm, we still do). We never played live, and left behind a 12” vinyl single in 1984 (‘Goatsucker / Voilà Hack’n’Slash’, released on our own Gates Of Heaven label, 200 numbered copies with picture sleeve and inner sheet, now very rare). One track was included in the ‘Sexy, Ipnotico’ CD compilation in 1995, but since both songs belong to a later, different SOG phase you will not find them in this album.
Our main sources of inspiration were (and still are) movies: the ‘Belfagor’, ‘Vidocq’ and ‘Les Compagnons De Baal’ TV series, Vincent Price, Jacques Tati, the Marx Brothers, Grand Guignol, Jean Renoir/Jean Louis Barreault’s ‘Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier’ and lots more. That other thing (music) came flashing by without second thoughts, as it always did.
After all, as Cocteau said, the nightingale sings very badly.Glezos, Paris, January 2010